Trine: Crowdfunded loans in solar energy for developing countries

Since this post was published, Trine has undergone some major changes. I have posted a comprehensive 2025 update to reflect this.

How investing through Trine creates Impact

Trine.com is a Swedish for-profit impact investing start-up that crowdfunds loans to African Asian companies, which then use the funds to develop their projects, often solar installations. After their original focus on solar home systems for families ended up in several investments defaulting (more on that below), they shifted their focus to projects for businesses (B2B).

Off-grid solar addresses a key problem in many developing countries. Unlike in rich countries, electricity grids in much of the developing world are unreliable even in cities. In rural areas, they might not even exist in the first place. As a result, companies either have to suffer expensive production interruptions when power is lost or they have to operate expensive – and polluting – diesel generators. Replacing these with solar panels, often also batteries, reduces emissions while improving the foundations for economic growth in these communities.

As I am writing this, Trine is funding three companies: Vu Phong and Stride Solar, both based in Vietnam, follow the approach described above. The third, Bisedge in Nigeria, sells electric forklifts that replace diesel-powered models. For all three, Trine

The exact business models vary, but over the last several years they have evolved to become more sophisticated. As an example, it has become possible to remotely shut down a solar installation if the user stops paying, thus greatly improving the financial sustainability of the industry. Pay-as-you-go comes with its own drawbacks though: the revenue of “selling” a solar system is spread out over a few years. If the solar company wants to continue to grow, it needs money from different sources. This is where Trine steps in.

Trine crowdfunds money to provide these solar companies with funds to speed up their growth, e.g. by buying new solar systems, training sales staff etc. But before sending a nice thick envelope with cash to Kenya or Myanmar (jk, that’s not how it works), they examine the company’s business model, strategy, management etc., not to mention their impact. Trine has a strong focus on the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and they report each project’s impact on them. When the analysis is complete, each potential borrower is rated on a scale from A-D (read more on Trine’s rating methodology). It seems the minimum rating to start a crowdfunding campaign is B, at least I haven’t seen any Cs or Ds so far. As can be expected, the lower the rating, the higher the risk and thus also the interest you can expect.

Terms

Promised returns are decent at around 5-8%, with the loan being amortised (i.e. slowly paid back) over 3-5 years, which is in line with what other impact investment platforms offer.

Trine used to have different reward tiers, with added interest if you invested more, but it seems they have phased these out in favour of the profit sharing model.

Usability

Trine boasts a userfriendly, modern site. The portfolio page allows you to see the distribution and diversification of your assets across different countries and borrowers.

Trine is very impact-oriented and they want you to see how your money is working for positive change in the world. They use the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals as a framework and show your portfolio’s contribution to each of the goals. That’s obviously very difficult because not all impact can be measured, but I think it’s still a good approach.

My experience with Trine

Trine is a good example for the risks and rewards that come along with impact investing. In my case, almost all payments had been on time for the first year or so. Things changed in late 2019 with my first project in Myanmar defaulting. It got worse during Covid-19, when more and more companies got into trouble. The pandemic was not the only reason for this: Trine’s early focus on solar home systems for poor rural families just didn’t work out, because hardly any of these companies ever became profitable. For me, this meant more than half of all my returns were eaten up by borrowers defaulting.

Throughout, Trine was very proactive and transparent in their communications about the company status, requiring investor’s agreement for certain measures to deal with troubled borrowers. But in the end, a default is a default, no matter how transparently it is communicated.

That was a tough experience for me as an investor, though I guess I shouldn’t complain too loudly – every default also meant some people lost their job and livelihood. At the same time, the blow was softened by the knowledge that my money at least contributed to improving people’s lives!

Now might not be the best time to invest in high-risk countries. On the other hand, draining their money will not help in overcoming the crisis. If you would like to create impact by investing with Trine, consider starting with a SIDA-protected loan. Protected loans will feature the SIDA label as part of their loan offer. SIDA’s website also contains some interesting information on how they work.

Some campaigns also used to provide investment protection by the Swedish Development Agency (SIDA) for 60% of the sum invested, which was a great incentive for investors to fund projects in rather unstable areas of the world.

Trine: Pros and Cons

Pro: Transparency After some criticism regarding their transparency and lack of publicly available due diligence, Trine now lists each borrower’s key strengths and weaknesses. If you sign a non-disclosure-agreement online, you can also gain access to additional documents from their due diligence.

Pro: Actual impact investing in both cleantech and economical development. Many of the companies funded might have difficulties getting money from other investment or at higher cost.

Pro: Returns Provided you can invest €1’000+ with Trine while still maintaining decent diversification, the Swedish platform offers very attractive returns. This is due to their new reward programme, which awards you bonus interest according to your total portfolio value. This bonus adds up as you move up the tiers (€1’000, €1’0000 and €50’000), meaning you can quickly get a return of 8%+. This is a significant improvement over their previous system, which awarded bonus interest only for higher investments in an individual project.

Pro: Usability Trine’s website is very attractive and easy to use, giving you most important information at a glance, such as your portfolio by countries and borrowers. The investment process is also quite straightforward, although you of course have to go through some regulatory steps first.

Con: Portfolio quality While Trine declares a moderate 2% default rate on their investments, my experience is somewhat different. So far I had one default which, despite a partial guarantee by the Swedish development agency SIDA eliminated a year’s worth of returns. Covid-19 did not help in this regard – several other borrowers have since had to delay payments or be restructured.

Category	Crowdfunded Loans, fixed return
Country of origin	Sweden (offers are denominated in Euros)
Geographical focus	primarily sub-saharan Africa, some in Asia and Latin America
Minimum investment	€25 per project
Cost	None for investors. Trine takes a cut of the interest payments received by the borrowers.
Referral programme	€10 for both the existing and new customer (they are a bit skimpy on this compared to other platforms). If you don’t have a friend already investing with Trine, you can use my code when signing up to support this blog: REFERRAL LINK
Similar offers	Lendahand.com (see review) Energiseafrica.co.uk Abundanceinvestment.com